Longitudinal microdata on the Swedish population, 1990-2006, are used to examine the numbers and characteristics of internal return migrants, emphasizing Sweden's three largest cities. Our study indicates that metropolitan regions are gaining population from net return migration, which thus carries people in the same direction as does most internal migration. Evidence also indicates that returnees to metropolitan regions are more likely to stay permanently than are migrants returning elsewhere. Furthermore, return migrants to metropolitan regions are distinguished from other return migrants in ways that emphasize the advantages of these regions, higher incomes and levels of education being among the pronounced attributes. However, metro-bound returnees do not have as many children as do other return migrants.

Economic development spans centuries and continents. Underlying infrastructural causes of development, such as institutions and networks, are subject to slow but persistent change. Accumulated infrastructural changes eventually become so substantial that they trigger a phase transition. Such transitions disrupt the prior conditions for economic activities and network interdependencies, requiring radically transformed production techniques, organizations and location patterns. The interplay of economic equilibria and structural changes requires a theoretical integration of the slow time scale of infrastructural change and the fast time scale of market equilibration. This paper presents a theory that encompasses both rapidly and slowly changing variables and illustrates how infrequent phase transitions caused four logistical revolutions in Europe over the past millennium.

Sweden is today an immigrant country with more than 14% foreign born. An increasing share of the immigrants comes from non-European countries. This implies that Sweden has been transformed from an ethnically homogenous country into a country with a large visible minority. In this paper we survey the effect of this change on school segregation. Building on Schelling's model for residential segregation, we argue that establishment of a visible minority has triggered a process of school segregation that in some respects can be compared with the developments in the United States. In order to test the validity of a Schelling-type process in Swedish schools we compare segregation levels in regions with different shares of visible minority students. We use data from the PISA 2003 survey in combination with register data on the ethnic composition of student population in different parts of Sweden. We find that school segregation is higher in regions with a large visible-minority population. We also find that, controlling for student background, there are smaller differences in performance across schools in regions with low shares of minority students.

Sweden is today an immigrant country with more than 14% foreign born. An increasing share of the immigrants comes from non-European countries. This implies that Sweden has been transformed from an ethnically homogenous country into a country with a large visible minority. In this paper we survey the effect of this change on school segregation. Building on Schelling's model for residential segregation, we argue that establishment of a visible minority has triggered a process of school segregation that in some respects can be compared with the developments in the United States. In order to test the validity of a Schelling-type process in Swedish schools we compare segregation levels in regions with different shares of visible minority students.We use data from the PISA 2003 survey in combination with register data on the ethnic composition of student population in different parts of Sweden. We find that school segregation is higher in regions with a large visible-minority population.We also find that, controlling for student background, there are smaller differences in performance across schools in regions with low shares of minority students.

We examine the role of regional import flows for renewal of regional industries. The hypothesis is that imports stimulate renewal of local industries by being vehicles for technology diffusion and means by which local firms can exploit advantages of global specialisation. We find robust and positive relationships between high-quality imports and renewal of regional exports, where the latter are measured by the introduction of novel export products of local firms. Connectedness to international markets via import networks appears to be a stimulus for the renewal of regional exports.

We examine the role of regional import flows for renewal of regional industries. The hypothesis is that imports stimulate renewal of local industries by being vehicles for technology diffusion and means by which local firms can exploit advantages of global specialisation. We find robust and positive relationships between high-quality imports and renewal of regional exports, where the latter are measured by the introduction of novel export products of local firms. Connectedness to international markets via import networks appears to be a stimulus for the renewal of regional exports.

Southern Africa's AIDS epidemic is profoundly spatially and temporally structured; so too are the lives of the young people whose families it blights. In this paper we draw on qualitative research with AIDS-affected young people in Malawi and Lesotho, and recent work theorising time space in human geography, to examine how time spaces of AIDS-related sickness and death intersect with the time spaces of young people and, importantly, those of their relations with others to produce differentiated outcomes for young people. We also explore the time spaces of those outcomes and of young people's responses to them. We conclude that a relational time space analysis of the impacts of AIDS on young people helps explain the diversity of those young people's experiences and allows AIDS to be contextualised more adequately in relation to everyday life and young people's wider lifecourses and their relationships with others. Moreover, the research points to the significance of the time space structuring of society in shaping the outcomes of familial sickness and death for young people.

Based on interview material relating to the current wave of housing renovation in Swedish cities,this article will analyse the profit-driven, traumatic and violent displacement in the wake ofcontemporary large-scale renovation processes of the so-called Million Program housingestates from the 1960s and 1970s. We maintain that the current form of displacement(through renovation) has become a regularized profit strategy, for both public and privatehousing companies in Sweden. We will pay special attention to Marcuse’s notion of‘displacement pressure’ which refers not only to actual displacement but also to the anxieties,uncertainties, insecurities and temporalities that arise from possible displacement due tosignificant rent increases after renovation and from the course of events preceding the actualrent increase. Examples of the many insidious forms in which this pressure manifests itself will begiven – examples that illustrate the hypocritical nature of much planning discourse and rhetoric ofurban renewal. We illustrate how seemingly unspectacular measures and tactics deployed in therenovation processes have far-reaching consequences for tenants exposed to actual or potentialdisplacement. Displacement and displacement pressure due to significant rent increases (which isprofit-driven but justified by invoking the ‘technical necessity’ of renovation) undermines the ‘rightto dwell’ and the right to exert a reasonable level of power over one’s basic living conditions, withall the physical and mental benefits that entails – regardless of whether displacement fearsmaterialize in actual displacement or not.

Based on interview material relating to the current wave of housing renovation in Swedish cities, this article will analyse the profit-driven, traumatic and violent displacement in the wake of contemporary large-scale renovation processes of the so-called Million Program housing estates from the 1960s and 1970s. We maintain that the current form of displacement (through renovation) has become a regularized profit strategy, for both public and private housing companies in Sweden. We will pay special attention to Marcuse’s notion of ‘displacement pressure’ which refers not only to actual displacement but also to the anxieties, uncertainties, insecurities and temporalities that arise from possible displacement due to significant rent increases after renovation and from the course of events preceding the actual rent increase. Examples of the many insidious forms in which this pressure manifests itself will be given – examples that illustrate the hypocritical nature of much planning discourse and rhetoric of urban renewal. We illustrate how seemingly unspectacular measures and tactics deployed in the renovation processes have far-reaching consequences for tenants exposed to actual or potential displacement. Displacement and displacement pressure due to significant rent increases (which is profit-driven but justified by invoking the ‘technical necessity’ of renovation) undermines the ‘right to dwell’ and the right to exert a reasonable level of power over one’s basic living conditions, with all the physical and mental benefits that entails – regardless of whether displacement fears materialize in actual displacement or not.

The current, dominating strategy of nature conservation within urban landscapes is to formally protect remaining patches of unexploited nature in nature reserves. However, integration of nature conservation frameworks into urban planning requires reconsideration of key issues, such as why, where, and how to protect nature in a purposeful way. As part of that process I statistically evaluate current nature conservation in 209 municipalities in southern Sweden by analysing the number, size, age, and land cover patterns of 1869 nature reserves in relation to the degree of urbanisation. The analyses reveal that in urban municipalities the nature reserves are fewer, but larger, and have a higher diversity of land covers. Having large nature reserves may be especially important in urban landscapes, since it is often highly fragmented. The land cover compositions show no differences between urban and rural nature reserves. However, urban nature reserves differ more from their surroundings compared with rural nature reserves, according to the identified changes in representation of land cover types with an increasing degree of urbanisation. The most urgent future challenge identified is to develop urban nature conservation strategies that are integrated into the urban context including other green areas and built-up areas, the land-use history, and the requirements for local ecosystem services across the landscape.

The current, dominating strategy of nature conservation within urban landscapes is to formally protect remaining patches of unexploited nature in nature reserves. However, integration of nature conservation frameworks into urban planning requires reconsideration of key issues, such as why, where, and how to protect nature in a purposeful way. As part of that process I statistically evaluate current nature conservation in 209 municipalities in southern Sweden by analysing the number, size, age, and land cover patterns of 1869 nature reserves in relation to the degree of urbanisation. The analyses reveal that in urban municipalities the nature reserves are fewer, but larger, and have a higher diversity of land covers. Having large nature reserves may be especially important in urban landscapes, since it is often highly fragmented. The land cover compositions show no differences between urban and rural nature reserves. However, urban nature reserves differ more from their surroundings compared with rural nature reserves, according to the identified changes in representation of land cover types with an increasing degree of urbanisation. The most urgent future challenge identified is to develop urban nature conservation strategies that are integrated into the urban context including other green areas and built-up areas, the land-use history, and the requirements for local ecosystem services across the landscape.

Global agreements have proliferated in the past ten years. One of these is the Kyoto Protocol, which contains provisions for emissions reductions by trading carbon through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The CDM is a market-based instrument that allows companies in Annex I countries to offset their greenhouse gas emissions through energy and tree offset projects in the global South. I set out to examine the governance challenges posed by the institutional design of carbon sequestration projects under the CDM. I examine three global narratives associated with the design of CDM forest projects, specifically North-South knowledge politics, green developmentalism, and community participation, and subsequently assess how these narratives match with local practices in two projects in Latin America. Findings suggest that governance problems are operating at multiple levels and that the rhetoric of global carbon actors often asserts these schemes in one light, while the rhetoric of those who are immediately involved locally may be different. I also stress the alarmist's discourse that blames local people for the problems of environmental change. The case studies illustrate the need for vertical communication and interaction and nested governance arrangements as well as horizontal arrangements. I conclude that the global framing of forests as offsets requires better integration of local relationships to forests and their management and more effective institutions at multiple levels to link the very local to the very large scale when dealing with carbon sequestration in the CDM.

This paper examines the material intertwinings of fish and water. It discusses how the presence of water and fish is simultaneously material and immaterial and examines how the processes and tensions between narratives of fish and water are caught up and inform human encounters with waterscapes. In particular, the paper does three things: first, it highlights the tensions between the angling literature and the practices and performances of angling. Second, it examines how fish embody the material and imaginative aspects of waterscapes, highlighting how fish are shaped to fit in or adapt to 'environmental quality' and human expectations. Third, it examines how water may be thought through as 'fishy' as made animate by the creatures that dwell there.

This paper examines the material intertwinings of fish and water. It discusses how thepresence of water and fish is simultaneously material and immaterial and examines how the processesand tensions between narratives of fish and water are caught up and inform human encounters withwaterscapes.In particular, the paper does three things: first, it highlights the tensions between theangling literature and the practices and performances of angling. Second, it examines how fishembody the material and imaginative aspects of waterscapes, highlighting how fish are shaped to fitin or adapt to `environmental quality' and human expectations. Third, it examines how water may bethought through as `fishy' as made animate by the creatures that dwell there.

Scholars have shown that technical standards play an important role in building global transportation and communication infrastructures, but the environmental standardization efforts associated with infrastructures have received far less attention. Combining scholarship from transportation geography, political ecology, and science and technology studies, we show how global connection is made, maintained, and contested through environmental management practices pegged to infrastructure standards. The Panama Canal expansion, completed in 2016, is a revealing illustration. The expansion has established the New Panamax shipping standard: the maximum allowable dimensions for vessels passing through the canal's massive new locks. The standard has become a benchmark for port modernization and channel deepening projects along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts of the United States and beyond. Because the maximum underwater depth, or draft, of ships transiting the new locks is much deeper than before (50 rather than 39.5 feet), geographically dispersed governments, firms, and port authorities have scrambled to reach that standard in hopes of attracting New Panamax ships and associated revenue streams. As this case shows, global transportation depends on the expensive, ecologically destabilizing, and often-contested practices of dredging and disposing of large volumes of sediment and organic matter. By showing how shipping networks and situated politics converge around infrastructure standards, we foreground the uneven environmental burdens and benefits of transportation.

The authors investigate geographical patterns of homicide in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The geography of crime in developing world cities has been an underresearched area in part because of the lack of good-quality, geocoded offence data. In the case of Sao Paulo the availability of a new digital police dataset has provided the opportunity to improve our understanding of its crime patterns. The authors report the testing of hypotheses about the spatial variation in homicide rates. This variation is explained by poverty, situational conditions determined by differences in land use, and processes that indicate links with the geography of drug markets and the availability of firearms.

The growing significance of housing to wealth inequality in Western societies is now well recognised and widely debated. This paper argues that understanding of the nature and causes of this problem and discussions of potential approaches to addressing it through progressive policy responses are both hampered by adopting a partial perspective on the housing question. Focusing singularly on ownership – how it has been idealised and subsidised, how it might be democratised and so forth – has led to scholars and policymakers tending to neglect the other main tenure form, in strict relation with which ownership always exists both materially and discursively: rental. We can neither understand why and how today’s asset-based inequalities have materialised nor plot realistic and meaningful policy responses unless we conceptualise and approach ownership and rental relationally. Using the United Kingdom and Swedish cases as exemplars, and examining how relevant national policy realities and logics have been constructed over time, the paper further argues that the emergence of significant asset-based inequalities in recent decades is rooted in the policy-driven emergence of significant inequalities – ideological as much as economic – between tenure forms, whereby ownership has increasingly been privileged over rental. If Western societies are to have any credible prospect of reducing existing property asset-based inequalities, preventing those inequalities from being reproduced within younger generations and limiting the likelihood of the re-emergence of comparable inequalities in the future, (re)instituting principles and practices of tenure equality should be made a primary political and policy objective.

The author examines the materialization of geographical knowledges in relation to the ongoing neoliberalization of urban space where the latter is based on processes of compulsory land purchase. The specific context for the study is two recently planned commercial redevelopments for the south London borough of Croydon in the United Kingdom, and the arguments mustered in support of these proposals. The author identifies and discusses three principal sets of geographical knowledges, which he examines under the headings symbolic, biopolitical, and scalar. In each case, he shows that the knowledges have strong modernist overtones. The paper seeks both to understand and contextualize these historical connections, and to consider the contemporary political work performed by the knowledges in question.

The author examines the BBC’s plans to move some of its key activities to Salford in the northwest of England. He develops a critique not so much of the plan to move, but of the specific proposals for that move (particularly as advanced by local parties in Salford) and of the economic-geographical claims assembled around them. To make these arguments, the author first identifies parallels between the proposals and Richard Florida’s ‘creative class’ formulations. He then draws on a range of critiques of the ‘creative class’ concept to contest the substance of the BBC-Salford plan—which, he argues, reproduces an entrenched neoliberal urban development agenda—and to question the premise that the move will create regional economic value more broadly. Framed against international research into creativity-led development agendas which has typically privileged metropolitan or regional actors, the author argues that, ultimately, the BBC’s proposals, while locally situated, are tightly bound up with national economics and politics.

The heterodox literature on financial risk has in recent years focused predominantly on how risk is distributed, and on the market instabilities and social inequalities that different risk distributions seed. Typically much less discussed is the constitution of financial risk, which is this article's concern. Drawing empirical examples from two climate financial instruments, its particular interest is in the changing scale - social, spatial and temporal - of the "risk pools" associated with different financial products: the populations across which the products in question serve to aggregate underlying risk. The article explores how, against a historical backdrop of four decades of scale compression in the shape of risk individualization under neoliberalism, certain novel climate financial products seemingly indicate a contrary stretching of the risk pool. The article critically examines sovereign catastrophe insurance pools and green (climate) bonds, highlighting both the significance of the stretching that they effect but also the tensions and limits apparent in this emergent dynamic.

This article examines recent plans for US municipalities to use the state legal power of eminent domain to forcibly acquire underwater mortgages (i.e. those with negative equity), and to refinance them on terms more favorable to the homeowners in question, as a way of addressing in a socially progressive way the nation's ongoing foreclosure crisis. The article makes three main arguments. The first is that insofar as the plan threatens to disrupt prevailing norms of value distribution and risk bearing, it represents a fundamental challenge to the existing political economy of urban financial capitalism in the US and the law's mediation thereof. The second is that value, risk, and their mediation through law must be understood in the context of geographical unevenness and shifting scales of legal governance. The third is that the geographical political economy associated with the eminent domain plan is about discoursesof risk, of markets, and indeed of law per seno less than materialities; and that the two are indelibly linked, with discourses having material effects when, through law, they structure value and risk for the manifold actors who operate within the sphere of housing finance.

Since the formulation of the mobilities paradigm, research has shown that movement is increasingly at the heart of our social identities. This paper argues that mobility, and indeed, hypermobility, constitutes to a growing extent who we are, whilst societal perspectives on mobility increasingly dictate how we need to move in time and space in order to accrue network capital. In this critical review, deeply embedded mechanisms of the social glamorization of mobility are uncovered, and juxtaposed with what we call a ‘darker side’ of hypermobility, including the physiological, psychological, emotional and social costs of mobility for individuals and societies. The paper concludes that whilst aspects of glamorization in regard to mobility are omnipresent in our lives, there exists an ominous silence with regard to its darker side.

A method is described to trace 'locality', or spatial variation in policy, through comparative analysis. It is argued that the problem of structure versus agency can never be solved once and for all by philosophical arguments, but always has to be rephrased into empirically manageable terms. This is possible through use of the 'most similar' approach of comparative anaysis. When external structural determinants of policy are kept under control, local variations can be traced back to locally specific determinants. These determinants must be examined in depth through case studies. This also paves the way for empirically based counterfactual reasoning. Thus, the extent to which local actors are not just forced by structural determinants to act in a certain way can be estimated. The general approach is illustrated by reference to a case study of local housing policies in Sweden. Some critical questions are raised. One must not forget that structures and actors, whether national or local, are inseperably bound up with processes, and that 'structures' are always just crystallised results of human action.

This paper studies redundant workers’ industrial and geographical mobility, and the consequences of post-redundancy mobility for regional policy strategies. This is accomplished by means of a database covering all workers who became redundant in major shutdowns or cutbacks in Sweden between 1990 and 2005. Frequencies of industrial and geographical mobility are described over time, and the influence of some important characteristics that make workers more likely to be subject to particular forms of mobilities are assessed. We find that re-employment rates vary extensively across industries and time. Whereas going back to the same or related industries is the most common re-employment strategy among workers who find a new job in the first year, workers who do not benefit from quick re-employment are increasingly squeezed out to new job fields and regions. Older workers and workers with high vested interest in their original industries usually employ a “same-industry/same-region” strategy. This most frequent, and perhaps often most attractive, same-industry strategy comes at a cost, however. Individuals who instead pursue other mobility strategies have a lower risk of suffering from another major redundancy in the future. Thus, in terms of regional policy, strategies promoting diversification to related industries after major redundancies seem to be much more important than trying to retain workers in their old industry. In this case the route via education (university or vocational training) is important, as it increases the likelihood of successfully changing industry at time of re-employment.

This paper addresses how the composition of industry structures, skills and human capital is related to regional development in peripheral and central locations. We do this by means of OLS models to analyse the relationship between purchase power growth and employment growth between 2001 and 2008 as well as a selection of variables constructed via register data of the total population in Sweden. The analysis demonstrates an evident spatial division of post-industrial development that larger regions benefit relatively more from than smaller regions do. The empirical findings indicate that a transition towards more knowledge intensive sectors and a higher educated labour force has the strongest impact on development in the largest Swedish regions, while a transition from manual skills towards more creative skills shows only a positive relationship with development in medium size regions. Consequently, the paper argues that the recent appraisal of the knowledge based economy mainly benefits the largest urban regions, meaning that regional size is an important parameter when discussing trajectories of regional development and the adaption to contemporary economic development paths.

Following increased attention being paid to the importance of labour-market processes in relation to knowledge diffusion and learning, this study addresses the influence of agglomeration economies (localisation, urbanisation, and scale) on the propensity to change jobs between and within local labour markets. From the use of longitudinal individual data (1990 ^ 2002), controlling for factors such as age, sex, income, and social relations, the results show that the composition of regional economies influences labour-market dynamism. We identify two cases of intraregional agglomeration mobility, that is, positive effects on job mobility, due to the concentration of similar activities (localisation economies) and the size of the labour market (urbanisation economies). The results also show that localisation economies compensate for regional structural disadvantages connected to small population numbers, as localisation effects in small regions have a significantlypositive effect on intraregional job-mobility rates, even compared with localisation effects in large and diversified metropolitan areas. The results indicate that the concentration of similar activities may be useful for small regions, if high levels of job mobility are crucial for the transfer of knowledge and the performance of firms.

With rapid worldwide urbanization it is urgent that we understand processes leading to the protection of urban green areas and ecosystems. Although natural reserves are often seen as preserving 'higher valued' rather than 'lower valued' nature, it is more adequate to describe them as outcomes of selective social articulation processes. This is illustrated in the Stockholm National Urban Park. Despite strong exploitation pressure, a diverse urban movement of civil society organizations has managed to provide narratives able to explain and legitimize the need for protection-a 'protective story'. On the basis of qualitative data and building on theories of value articulation, social movements, and actor-networks, we show how activists, by interlacing artefacts and discourses from cultural history and conservation biology, managed to simultaneously link spatially separated green areas previously seen as disconnected, while also articulating the interrelatedness between the cultural and the natural history of the area. This connective practice constructed holistic values articulating a unified park, which heavily influenced the official framing of the park's values and which now help to explain the success of the movement. In contrast to historically top-down-led designation of natural reserves, we argue that the involvement of civil society in protecting nature (and culture) is on the rise. This nonetheless begs the question of who can participate in these value-creating processes, and we also strive to uncover constraining and facilitating factors for popular participation. Four such factors are suggested: (i) the number and type of artefacts linked to an area; (ii) the capabilities and numbers of activists involved; (iii) the access to social arenas; and (iv) the social network position of actors.

With rapid worldwide urbanization it is urgent that we understand processes leading to the protection of urban green areas and ecosystems. Although natural reserves are often seen as preserving 'higher valued' rather than 'lower valued' nature, it is more adequate to describe them as outcomes of selective social articulation processes. This is illustrated in the Stockholm National Urban Park. Despite strong exploitation pressure, a diverse urban movement of civil society organizations has managed to provide narratives able to explain and legitimize the need for protection-a 'protective story'. On the basis of qualitative data and building on theories of value articulation, social movements, and actor-networks, we show how activists, by interlacing artefacts and discourses from cultural history and conservation biology, managed to simultaneously link spatially separated green areas previously seen as disconnected, while also articulating the interrelatedness between the cultural and the natural history of the area. This connective practice constructed holistic values articulating a unified park, which heavily influenced the official framing of the park's values and which now help to explain the success of the movement. In contrast to historically top-down-led designation of natural reserves, we argue that the involvement of civil society in protecting nature (and culture) is on the rise. This nonetheless begs the question of who can participate in these value-creating processes, and we also strive to uncover constraining and facilitating factors for popular participation. Four such factors are suggested: (i) the number and type of artefacts linked to an area; (ii) the capabilities and numbers of activists involved; (iii) the access to social arenas; and (iv) the social network position of actors.

China is currently seeking to transform its economic structure from a traditional industrial to a more innovative, human-capital driven, and knowledge-based economy. Our research examines the effects of three key factors on Chinese regional development in an attempt to gauge to what degree China has transformed from an industrial to a knowledge-based economy, based on higher levels of (1) technology and innovation, (2) human capital and knowledge/professional/creative occupations, and (3) factors like tolerance, universities, and amenities which act on the flow of the first two. We employ structural equation models to gauge the effects of these factors on the economic performance of Chinese regions. Our research generates four key findings. First, the distribution of talent (measured both as human capital and as knowledge – professional and creative occupations) is considerably more concentrated than in the US or other advanced economies. Second, universities are the key factor in shaping the distribution both of talent and of technological innovation. Third, tolerance also plays a role in shaping the distribution of talent and technology across Chinese regions. Fourth, and perhaps most strikingly, we find that neither talent nor technology is associated with the economic performance of Chinese regions. This stands in sharp contrast to the pattern in advanced economies and suggests that the Chinese economic model, at least at the time of data collection, appears to be far less driven by the human capital or technology factors that propel more advanced economies. This, in turn, suggests that China is likely to face substantial obstacles in moving from its current industrial stage of development to a more knowledge-based economy.

Niklas Luhmann was one of the most innovative and productive social theorists of the 20thcentury. He developed a comprehensive and distinctive social theory and his ideas have enrichedmany disciplines. Yet, only few geographers have engaged with his work. Convinced of its qualities,our intention is to stimulate a critical reception of his theory among human geographers. Herean introduction into his theory of social systems is provided, and the possibilities for a geographyof social systems is explored. A key element of our proposal is a differential notion of space as apossibility of distinction, which complements Luhmann's epistemological notion of time. Our conclu-sion is that a geography of social systems would have to set out conceptually from accessibilitysystems, which are systems that encompass communications, their necessary physical and ecologicalenvironment, as well as their coordination in various dimensions of space and time

Spatial homogamy, or the geographical closeness of life partners, has received little attention inrecent decades. Theoretically, partners may be found anywhere in the world, as increases ineducational participation, affluence, mobility and internet access have reduced the meaning ofgeographical distance in general. This paper examines whether geography still matters in theSwedish partner market, by examining distances between partners before co-residence overtime. Register data are used to track the residential histories (1990–2008) of couples whomarried or had a child in 1996, 2002 or 2008 (N¼292,652). With the couple as the unit ofanalysis, the distance between partners before co-residence is explained by geographical, socioeconomicand demographic indicators. I find that although the distance between partners hasincreased over time, it is still the case that half of all partners lived within 9 kilometres of eachother before moving in together. Demographic and socio-economic characteristics explain someof the variation in spatial homogamy, but geographical factors, such as previous place of residence,spatial mobility, degree of urbanization and nearness of parents, are crucial. Even in a globalizedsociety, most people still find their partners very close by. The findings are relevant to the familymigration literature, where residential mobility at the beginning of co-residence has received littleattention, despite long-lasting consequences of partner choice on social ties and people’s socioeconomiccareers. The results exemplify the importance of short geographical distances forintimate relationships.

Spatial homogamy, or the geographical closeness of life partners, has received little attention in recent decades. Theoretically, partners may be found anywhere in the world, as increases in educational participation, affluence, mobility and internet access have reduced the meaning of geographical distance in general. This paper examines whether geography still matters in the Swedish partner market, by examining distances between partners before co-residence over time. Register data are used to track the residential histories (1990-2008) of couples who married or had a child in 1996, 2002 or 2008 (N = 292,652). With the couple as the unit of analysis, the distance between partners before co-residence is explained by geographical, socio-economic and demographic indicators. I find that although the distance between partners has increased over time, it is still the case that half of all partners lived within 9 kilometres of each other before moving in together. Demographic and socio-economic characteristics explain some of the variation in spatial homogamy, but geographical factors, such as previous place of residence, spatial mobility, degree of urbanization and nearness of parents, are crucial. Even in a globalized society, most people still find their partners very close by. The findings are relevant to the family migration literature, where residential mobility at the beginning of co-residence has received little attention, despite long-lasting consequences of partner choice on social ties and people's socioeconomic careers. The results exemplify the importance of short geographical distances for intimate relationships.

How can societies ensure urban residents' access to health-promoting green spaces while also pursuing the benefits of densification? Evidence of a relationship between leisure home ownership and health can inform efforts to resolve this dilemma. Using longitudinal register data, we assessed the prospective association between ownership of a leisure home and early retirement for health reasons among 42 588 adults residing in high-density Swedish urban municipalities. The research design included controls for 'drift' of unhealthy people into particular residential circumstances, and other potential alternative explanations for the association of focal interest. After adjustment for age, socioeconomic position, and type of primary housing, logistic regression analysis revealed that men with a leisure home had lower odds of early retirement for health reasons than men who did not own a leisure home. Among women, leisure home ownership interacted with socioeconomic position; in contrast to nonowners, women who owned a leisure home had higher odds of early retirement for health reasons if they also had higher levels of education and employment income. The associations we have uncovered provide additional insight on the relationship between access to natural environments and health, and they warrant consideration in efforts to resolve the densification dilemma.

Although we know a lot about why households choose certain dwellings, we know relatively little about the mechanisms behind their choice of neighbourhood. Most studies of neighbourhood choice focus only on one or two dimensions of neighbourhoods: typically poverty and ethnicity. In this paper we argue that neighbourhoods have multiple dimensions and that models of neighbourhood choice should take these dimensions into account. We propose the use of a conditional logit model. From this approach we can gain insight into the interaction between individual and neighbourhood characteristics which lead to the choice of a particular neighbourhood over alternative destinations. We use Swedish register data to model neighbourhood choice for all households which moved in the city of Uppsala between 1997 and 2006. Our results show that neighbourhood sorting is a highly structured process where households are very likely to choose neighbourhoods where the neighbourhood population matches their own characteristics. We find that income is the most important driver of the sorting process, although ethnicity and other demographic and socioeconomic characteristics play important roles as well.

Knowledge-intensive services firms depend on the skills and networks of employees and tend to cluster in large-city regions. This raises the fundamental question of whether knowledge-intensive services firms 'learn through urban labour pools' in manners that have implications for innovation. To address it, a distinction is in this paper made between 'related variety' and 'unrelated variety' of work-life experiences collected by employees and combined in firms. The empirical analysis uses innovation survey and register data to demonstrate that higher levels of unrelated variety among staff in urban knowledge-intensive services firms inspire innovation activity and increase the probability of innovation success. Outside cities, where knowledge-intensive services firms on average have more specialized knowledge bases, innovation responds negatively to unrelated variety and positively to related variety. As a result, the sign, size and significance of urban-rural dividing lines in innovation propensities depend on whether firms have cultivated the skill profiles that are most conducive to innovation in their locations. Constraints faced specifically by knowledge-intensive services firms outside cities in this respect are identified and implications for policy drawn.

Geographers have studied the complex relationships between cultural production, consumption, and space for some time, but the marketplace for cultural products is being reconfigured by digital technologies and broader societal trends. For producers of fashion and music the contemporary marketplace is a double-edged sword featuring lower entry barriers and fierce competition from an unprecedented number of producers and ubiquitous substitutes. Global firms and local entrepreneurs struggle to stand out in the crowd and command monopoly rents for their unique goods and services. This paper examines how independent cultural producers use ‘exclusivity’ to generate attention and distinction. Drawing on qualitative research with independent musicians and fashion designers in Toronto, Stockholm, Berlin, and New York it presents three mechanisms through which exclusivity can be created. These include exploiting consumer demand for uniqueness, enrolling consumers into the production and promotion process, and manipulating physical and virtual space.

This paper explores the effects and underlying intentions of Swedish practices of exporting sustainable development models to Chinese ecocities. Under the 'bestpractice' banner, international architectural firms are often invited to masterplan ecocity developments. The 'sustainable city' has thus become an export commodity, supported by the Swedish government and seen as especially suited to the Chinese ecocity market. Two cases are examined, where Swedish architecture firms have been commissioned to masterplan Chinese ecocities: the Caofedian and Wuxi Eco-cities. In particular, I examine three kinds of 'effects': first, the planning discourse manifested in the planning documents; second, how these plans materialize on the ground; and, third, the effects of this exported planning practice on Swedish policy and practice at home. This paper advances our understanding of how transnational urban sustainability practices are constructed and circulated. It further adds to the field of planning mobilities by examining not only the discourse and diffusion of transnational master planning but also how the 'export' circulates and returns. I argue that the two intentional logics of exporting the Swedish 'sustainable city'-to shape a better world and to export clean-tech products-could both be seen as having failed in these two cases. Instead, the naming and branding of the ecocities seem to boost a certain repetitive problematic idea and practice of sustainable urban development. I argue that the Swedish exported practice strengthens and legitimizes a circulating narrative establishing a sustainable urban planning practice fostering a paradoxically generic image of upper-middle-class consumers as ecocity inhabitants in China as well as in Sweden.